For the best user experience, upgrade your browser.

Thanks for visiting! This site makes use of some web technologies not supported by Internet Explorer 9. To optimize your experience, please upgrade your browser. If you prefer, you can use a different browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.

Conflict Is Not Abuse

Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.

This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.

EPUB eBook

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.

This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.

Why is availability limited?

The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:

Disney video end user license agreement (EULA)

Before you stream any Disney Content, carefully read this EULA. Before you can license any Disney Content, you will be asked to accept all the terms of this EULA. If you do not wish to accept all the terms of this EULA, you will not be able to license the Disney Content.

You understand and agree that the Disney Content you receive through the OverDrive service, such as Disney movies, images, artwork and other copyrightable materials (the "Disney Content") is licensed by OverDrive from Disney. The Disney Content you receive through the OverDrive service, including the copyrights in the Disney Content, is owned by Disney, and is protected by the copyright laws of the United States, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. OverDrive and Disney do not transfer any title, right or interest to or in the Disney Content to you.

Disney Content delivered to you through the OverDrive service is licensed to you; not sold, transferred or assigned to you.

OverDrive grants you a non-exclusive and non-assignable sublicense to stream and view a copy of the Disney Content only on approved devices only for the purpose of your personal, non-commercial viewing of the Disney Content consistent with the terms of this license. The delivery of the Disney Content does not transfer to you any commercial or promotional use rights in the Disney Content. All other rights in the Disney Content are reserved by Disney, and any other use is strictly prohibited.

You may not transfer, distribute, copy or reproduce the Disney Content or any portion thereof onto any physical medium, memory, server, device or other hardware, or any other medium now known or hereafter devised. In addition, you may not sell, rent, lease, redistribute or sublicense the Disney Content. You may not attempt to circumvent, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, impair or otherwise defeat any encryption, rights signaling or copy protection technology in which the Disney Content is wrapped or otherwise associated with, and you may not edit, modify, translate or create derivative works or adaptations of the Disney Content. You may not decompile, copy, reproduce, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce the computer file in which the Disney Content is stored to a human-readable form.

You may not stream or transmit Disney Content outside of the United States of America and Canada, and their respective territories, possessions and associated commonwealths.

The Disney Content is provided "AS IS". Disney expressly disclaims any warranties and conditions, express, implied, or statutory, including but not limited to, warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, satisfactory quality and noninfringement, and their equivalents under the laws of any jurisdiction. Disney does not warrant or otherwise state that the Disney Content will meet your requirements.

Under no circumstances shall Disney be liable for any damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages of any kind under any legal theory (tort, contract or otherwise) that result from the use of, or the inability to use, the Disney Content, even if Disney has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Any material breach of the EULA, including without limitation, copying or distribution of the Disney Content, will result in termination of the license for such Disney Content.

Place a hold

Success!

Send to Nook® app

If this is your first time selecting "Send to NOOK® app," you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK® app."

You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android, or Windows 8.